Writing. Reading. Teaching. Traveling. Parenting. Partnering.
With Eyes Wide and Lookin' Out for the Side Roads.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Shakespearian Insults 101 (or, You Fusty Nut)

I have a mug problem.This may come as no surprise to you, since I also have a coffee problem. Lately my coffee has been half-decaf, but that’s another story.For Christmas this past year, my dear sister-in-law gave me what has become my new favorite coffee mug. I just had to share. It’s called a Shakespearian Insults Mug, and it’s nice and fat and easy to hold. I love it.See? Love it, love it.

When I was a kid, I used to hear my grandmother (and my mother) use this oft-repeated phrase: “There is no excuse for rudeness.” Rarely did I ever hear “Use your words!” because, well, I was full of words and probably didn’t need any excuse to use more.

Shakespeare, however, didn’t know my grandmother. And he used lots of great words, some of his best in insult form. Every morning I use this mug, it makes me laugh.Behold, the genius of the Bard:Shakespearian Insults 101(Try them out alone, or by inserting, “Oh, you …,” “You are …,” or “You are nothing but a ….” in front.)“Beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave”“lewdly inclin’d”“the soul of this man is his clothes”“quintessence of dust”“canker blossom”“poisonous bunch-back’d toad”“O gull, O dolt, as ignorant as dirt”“clod of wayward marl”“false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand”“roast-meat for worms”“infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker”“anointed sovereign of sighs and groans”“lump of foul deformity”“highly fed and lowly taught”“all eyes and no sight”“all the infections that the sun sucks up”“elvish-mark’d abortive, rooting hog”“veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth”“I do desire we may be better strangers”“You rampallian! You fustilarian!”“mountain of mad flesh”“light of brain”“bolting-hutch of beastliness”“not so much brain as ear wax”“long-tongu’d babbling gossip”“thou art a boil, a plague sore”And my favorite:“a fusty nut with no kernel”* I’m not being paid to endorse this mug. I just like it so much, I had to share.

About Me

I'm the author of KEOWEE VALLEY, an historical adventure set in the Revolutionary-era Carolinas and in the Cherokee country, published by Bell Bridge Books. I'm also a mercurial, 30-something writer who loves to travel, read literature AND entertainment, and is deathly afraid of convention.

QUOTES FOR THE ROAD...

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning."

~ Catherine Aird

"I think there is a fatality in it--I never go to the place I set out for."

~ Lawrence Stern, from A Sentimental Journey"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need. Perhaps there are times when the contradictions of love are so inter-mingled that the only way to see the truth of love is to pit it against the incredible reality of lust.”